The danger in writing a meandering, unfocused encyclical that seems to adopt most of the worldly zeitgeist is that fallen elements “within” the Church will adopt it as their own and take it to the next logical step. And so now a parish in Toronto closes a televised Mass (and hoo-boy what an uninspiring Mass of the elderly, for the elderly that was) with a hymn to the pagan goddess gaia……..that is, to a demon. For “all the gods of the gentiles are demons” (Ps 95:5).

See @ 27:30:

Yeah baby. Worship that devil!

The only young people within 500 yards of that Mass are paid employees.

Brought to you, by the way, by the Archdiocese of Toronto official Youtube channel.

Makes you so proud to be a Catholic, dudn’t it! I can feel the Holy Ghost coursing through my veins when I hear the soaring lyrics of “Oh Gaia!”

A church of dying liberals, for dying liberals. Oh this is a church with a grand, grand future.

We live in a profoundly strange, even perverse, time, when so many people, men and women alike, seem at war with their own biology and nature. Women spend decades taking powerful carcinogens to keep from having a baby but still fornicating with abandon, while men are increasingly emasculated and feminized. More and more people are not just childless, but positively anti-child. Having any child at all is considered in many quarters selfish and irresponsible, while having more than one or, at most, two children is considered outright insane.

I’m sure many readers can relate. We’ve all gotten the stares, the incredibly insensitive and downright rude comments (“you know what causes that, right?”), and even removal from certain cliques and social milieus. If you’ve observed this, you’re not alone. As Mollie Hemingway notes, this is a real and growing phenomenon:

In the Washington Post last year, Lisa Miller sneered that Republican candidates who had more than a couple children were showcasing their “smug fecundity” in their family photos. Miller said that those women who aren’t in a constant battle to keep their wombs empty are putting “their natural fertility first — before their brains, before their ability to earn a living, before their independence — because that’s what God wants.” [There is criticism galore of this statement in the next para, but for me, I observe all the amazingly false dichotomies. Brain surgeons and PhDs can be SAHMs, SAHMs can contribute significantly to family earnings while raising children, and the idea that a woman raising children loses her independence is asinine. What is really being communicated here is a repudiation of women who don’t swallow the radical feminist mantra of childlessness, workplace career, and fornication/adultery/divorce as “empowerment.”]

There is much more than a whiff of the misogyny in denigrating mothers of multiple children as brainless, in stating that mothers who are homemakers are inferior to those who “earn” their living, or in attacking women for prioritizing fertility above independence. It’s not just that nobody on planet earth could be truly independent — which is to say completely self-reliant or free of any other human support. It’s not just that we each depended on others from the moment of our conception to birth, but all of society is comprised of individuals who work with each other and depend on each other throughout their lives. Or healthy societies are, at least. It may be impolitic to suggest that men and women are in any way different, science be damned, but many women have a particular specialty in cultivating relationships and family. To denigrate women who acknowledge and accept this as a good thing rather than fight against it is not exactly life-affirming. [It’s a lot more than that. It’s a wicked calumny against good women for rejecting the feminist paradigm]

But that’s just one example of media promulgation of the fear of children and fertile women. Let’s just revisit a few of the other media highlights over the last couple of years that suggest a problem: [Lists Wendy Davis’ overnight stardom for filibustering a late-term abortion ban in Texas, Kermit Gosnell, Obamacare contraception mandate, the destruction of Komen for briefly de-funding Planned Barrenhood]

…….It’s almost as if there is a pattern in how the media treats stories about women and their wombs. “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament,” activist Florynce Kennedy famously said. But the fact is that, as far as the media are concerned, abortion is a sacrament. And keeping the womb empty at all costs during all, or nearly all, of one’s fertile years is the sine qua non of modern American womanhood. Woe to the woman who “chooses” otherwise.[That’s the point – those who go off the feminist plantation (witness Sarah Palin) – will be eviscerated. It’s like that with every element of the left, however.]

A comedian on Twitter recently mocked a family with a large number of kids. The replies to the tweet were even more disturbing, including references to “mindless bodies” and how the “Mom looks surprisingly good, for a puppy mill.”………

This is what fecundophobia looks like.

In August, I visited the Hawthorne Street Fair in Portland, Oregon, and had a blast. A parade of Occupy protesters marched down the street, calling on everyone to vacate their houses and live outside — and to turn their houses into houseplant sanctuaries. I hadn’t been at the street fair more than five minutes before I was asked to sign something in support of Planned Parenthood. Then I saw the NARAL Pro-Choice America booth, encouraging activism in support of abortion rights. A few blocks later I was thankful to see enthusiastic signage in support of adoption. It turned out to be about pet adoption. By the time I got to the tent with a sign that said “Thank you for not breeding,” I’d had enough.

This phenomenon of deliberate, angry childlessness and antipathy towards those who procreate is largely confined to the culturo-political left. That’s not to say it’s entirely confined – far too many “conservatives” are of the “two kids at most” mentality.

There is another factor at play, of course. That’s the correlation between fornication, number of lifetime partners, and childlessness. The vast, vast majority of women who have more than two children only ever have one lifetime sexual partner. These women are also the least likely to ever divorce.

Which, speaking of……young people, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Make sure you marry a good, moral, Catholic virgin. Your lifetime chances of divorce will be infinitesimal if you do. The data is clear, a woman with 5 or more lifetime partners WILL get divorced at least once in her life:

70+% ten year divorce risk translates to a greater than 95% divorce risk over a lifetime. Even TWO partners outside marriage means a greater than 2/3 likelihood for divorce. And yet today most young women graduating college have had DOZENS of partners. Some fail to make it out of high school without that many notches on their belts.

The numbers for males are somewhat similar but generally about 1/4 – 1/3 less. Even men with more then 20 partners have only a 45% lifetime chance of divorce.

Whereas those with only one lifetime partner basically never divorce.

I seem to have gone far afield! Oh well. Worth what it cost you, as always.

I’m reading a highly edifying biography of the great Ecuadorian statesman Gabriel Garcia Moreno. Garcia Moreno is often held up as the ideal in a Catholic politician in the liberal democratic milieu. A loyal son of the Church, he conducted all affairs of state in accord with the Truth Christ has revealed through Holy Mother Church. Like Engelbert Dolfuss, he was made to die for his Catholic Faith.

[This post got long. If you have to skip most of it, read the third paragraph from the bottom, which starts.….If a man were bold enough……..it gives an excellent summation of the problem of republican government]

This biography of Garcia Moreno was written in roughly 1880 by Redemptorist Father Augustine Berthe. It was translated into English by Lady Herbert in 1889. The book starts with a brief overview of the history of many of the Spanish colonies in South America, and their subsequent war for independence under Simon Bolivar. The book then explores how diabolical masonic influence took Bolivar’s relatively faithful and conservative (but still disordered) views of “liberty” and succeeded in instilling a bitter Jacobin form of government that put the persecution of the Church as its highest priority.

In so doing, author Fr. Berthe lays out some quite cogent criticisms of the libertine democratic-Republican form of government and why it can often be even more repressive and totalitarian than even the most tyrannical monarchies. By exalting man as the source of all political power and all right, and pushing God either firmly to the side or entirely out of the picture, systems are created which can propagate almost endless degrees of tyranny, and they can wind up being even worse than the worst dictatorships. While it is theoretically possible for the liberal form of government to exist in accord with the Faith, should it be visibly grounded in Jesus Christ and recognize Christ as the source of all its authority, that has almost never happened in the past. It should be remembered that all the real horror-show communist states saw themselves as the perfection of “democracy,” had regular “elections” and “representative” political organs, and yet in the name of the “people” these institutions were used to persecute, rob, subjugate, and torment the vast majority of the people.

A few quotes examining the problems of enlightenment-based “liberal” government below:

…….Like all men of 1789, [Bolivar] identified monarchy with despotism and the republic with liberty, confusing form with substance. His philosophy was Rousseau’s social contract, his gospel the declaration of the rights of man, his principle of government the people’s sovereignty………Everything had to bend before the parliament, that is, the majority representing the people; everything had to bow before the legality it imposed. We recognize here the liberal and parliamentary theory, a resurrection (in a different form) of regalist despotism. The revolutionaries said that the monarch’s law had man’s free will as its principle – And is not a parliament composed of men? – A king could repeat the crimes of a Nero or the follies of a Caligula. – Does a majority become infallible or impeccable? On attaining power, does a party automatically divest itself of these tyrannical passions that we call ambition, cupidity, vengeance, and impiety? An absolute parliament is the substitution of a despotism of the many for the despotism of one man. In fact, it is worse; a crowned tyrant may always fear the dagger or insurrection, whereas the uncrowned petty tyrants of our assemblies, impersonal cogs of the legislative machine, have absolutely no responsibility. [Point of clarity: absolutist government grew out of the Renaissance and the glorification of all things Roman. Since Rome was seen as the height of civilization to that point, shouldn’t government rightly imitate Rome and its tyranny? Thus developed the theory of royal absolutism/regal despotism, mentioned above, asserting even authority over the Church and spiritual sphere. From that error we got the protestant revolution and many countries embracing heresy at the behest of their head of state. So liberalism, meant to correct royal tyranny, has most often emerged as an even more tyrannical form of government. Our experience in the US and Anglosphere has generally been much happier to date – but many fear that is beginning to change. Self-serving, elitist, authoritarian “libertine” governments in South America, Africa, and many other locales have been the ruin of these nations. We may have the same experience here soon]

……..To establish a free government it is essential to find a moral bridle that will curb human will, whether it is the will of an emperor, a king or a parliament, when this human will, borne along by the passions, becomes tyrannical. This bridle of justice is nothing other than the law of God, interpreted by the Church, His official organ. God alone, in commanding, does not become a despot, because He is sovereign Truth and sovereign Justice. One can debate the various merits of the respective forms of government and the way they are suited to a particular state or people; but power, in the end – whether the power of an individual, or of an assembly – will always degenerate into tyranny if it is emancipated from divine laws and proclaimed to be absolute. [And I think that’s what more and more morally minded people in this country see today, that this nation is gradually rejecting God’s truth and becoming increasingly despotic. We see powerful people behaving more and more as if they are above the law, and we see more and more repression of ordinary people. The examples are far too numerous to list. Any government not visibly founded on Jesus Christ with Him as its Head and arbiter is ultimately doomed to destruction.]

…….Revolution, based on the satanic principle of man’s absolute sovereignty, was fatally bound to persecute the Church, and the Church would never abdicate the sovereignty she held from God. [But Cardinal Ratzinger said Guadium Et Spes was a “counter-Syllabus” and a reconciliation?]

How, in the midst of an essentially Catholic country, could a majority hostile to the Church be created in the parliamentary chambers? In this connection Santander was not ignorant of any of the maneuvers employed by the Europeans (French). First, in Bogota’ he established a Lodge of Freemasons…….There the unsuspecting were given lessons in English and French, and subsequently they were enrolled in the sect, which was very fashionable at the time. Using their own members who controlled the press, they began a campaign of vilification of the Church and all conservative voices. As such, this Catholic nation voted for an impressive majority of Freemasons to frame its constitution. [I have been shocked to learn that the entire forced institution of Church-persecuting libertine government south of the border has been almost entirely founded, financed, and directed by the Lodge. I had no idea of the depths’ of the Lodge’s diabolical influence. I can well see why membership involves excommunication, or used to. Now leading Masons proclaim they no longer need to war against the Church as the Church has become the toothless, indifferent institution the Alta Vendita always desired]

[Masonic favorite Bentham……] “The majority cannot be resisted in any issue, even if it legislates against religion and natural law, even if it were to command children to kill their fathers” The revolution….never lays down its arms. Those it cannot vanquish, it assassinates.

………Woe betide anyone on the continent of Columbus who dared to impugn the sovereign people, the great idol of the two Americas, or who dared to say that the Church is above the State and the law of the Gospel above the decrees of parliament!

…….Under the barbarous names of secularization and laicization – euphemisms that mean repudiation – have not all the European peoples, like the Americans, broken the ties that united them to Jesus Christ and His Church? ……

……If a man were bold enough to attempt to restore a nation to its condition of normality, that is, to set it on its knees before God, he would find himself confronted with……….Parties of different opinions joining forces into a consolidated army to rescue the sacrosanct principle of the sovereignty of the people, the palladium of modern societies. Liberals[today’s “conservatives”]and radicals[today’s leftists]war against each other, no doubt, over the question who will govern the state, but they agree wondrously when it comes to proclaiming the state’s absolute supremacy and its divorce from the Church. The only difference between these brothers and friends is that the radicals, for love of the state, what to kill the Church and shake off its claims forever, whereas the liberals are agreed to let her live, so long as they can throw her in prison whenever she seeks to assert the divine law in opposition to the edicts of the sovereign people. There is more, however: these rationalistic principles have so penetrated public opinion that one can see a good number of Catholics [today, virtually all] rallying to this standard; they are Christians and the Church is their mother, so they consent to obey her; but, as citizens, they regard her as something foreign whose supremacy they cannot accept.[These views cannot be reconciled. It was acceptance of “separation of Church and state” with the essential supremacy going to the state that started large scale apostasy within the Church. That is to say, the first error was “Church subordinate to state,” and spread out naturally from there] They want the Catholic Church to be free, like protestantism, Judaism, and islam; but they want the State to be even more free, and absolutely independent. Political men see this modern “right” as constituting a signal progress in civilization, so much so that those who work to restore the ancient right of the Church are now regarded as retrograde reactionaries.

———End Quote——–

I know, for Americans, this kind of criticism of democracy comes across as unnatural, unsettling, and even unpatriotic – which only shows the degree to which we have been propagandized into accepting the “natural supremacy” of this form of government. Anglos seem uniquely well-suited to the form of government they invented – duh – but even here and in Britain the normal checks and balances are breaking down and government of the self-anointed elites, by the elites, and for the elites is becoming more and more the norm.

That’s another key point not mentioned above: all the lip service to the “supremacy of the sovereign will” or the “will of the people” papers over the fact that, for the most part, this is not true. Throughout history, save for a few relatively brief and idyllic examples, and certainly this is even more true around the world today, the “popular will” contained in even the best “democratic” government is really the will of a connected, moneyed elite. That may be fine, but it’s not what we are sold. We are sold the democracy is personal empowerment, but I think more and more people see that as a crock today.

Something for both the Brits and Americans today, two great videos, one featuring the mighty Avro Vulcan B.2, mainstay of the RAF Bomber Command for years, the other, a very educational video on the first strike package launched against a Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) site in the history of aerial warfare.

First up, a good high definition video of what I believe is the only flying Vulcan left in the world at the Royal International Air Tattoo 2015. Unfortunately, it seems the Vulcan will soon have flown for the last time, since the aircraft will be grounded after this airshow season. There are fears the aircraft could crash and the display team burns through almost $10 million per airshow season to keep it airborne. Also, the British regulatory agencies seem to want the bird out of the air.

So, this is one of the last times a truly remarkable aircraft will ever take to the skies:

The Brits have built some of the world’s ugliest aircraft over the years. The Vulcan is absolutely not one of them. That wing is a tour de force. And to think it was designed, without computers, back in the mid-50s! It allowed the Vulcan to fly very high, fast, and far. Avro knew what they were about.

The other video is very different, but is one to be greatly appreciated. Produced by a man who flew the mission himself involved himself, just over 50 years ago (Col. Victor Vizcarra, USAF, Ret.), the flight consists of a CGI re-creation of the events of the mission. I believe it is narrated by Col. Vizcarra himself. It is. He goes into great detail, discussing the reason for the missions, force constitution, startup, mission aborts, hitting the tanker, and then a flight-by-flight (each flight consisting of 4 aircraft in the strike force) overview of the conduct of the mission. It’s really well done and makes clear the dangers and difficulties of this kind of mission. I think any River Rat would be proud:

Notice @12:00 the narrator says the pilots had to descend below their planned 100 ft altitude! BELOW 100 ft! Thank goodness the Red River Valley was about tennis court flat.

Notice this mission was flown before the mass application of camouflage starting in summer 1965.

Really nice bit @12:30-13:00.

Is that real mission audio in the video, or a recreation? It’s recreation.

This is just really fantastic history on the F-105 Thunderchief (Thud) and its role in the early air war. This is just great.

There probably hasn’t been an American aircraft before or since that could go as fast down low as the Thud. Thud pilots have written many times how they could maintain 550 kts or more with a full load without afterburner while Phantoms would be maxed out at 450 kts or less. That’s a major unknown fact of modern aerial warfare, fast jets with “official” top speeds in excess of Mach 2 are often surprisingly slow once a bunch of tanks and ordinance are hung all over the aircraft. The extra drag and weight just kills their performance. I have read that in some scenarios an A-10 with a 6-8,000 lb load can cruise at higher speed than an F-16 with a similar load. And an A-10 can only cruise at about 300 kts!

The Thud was a dedicated strike plane (it probably should have had an A-designation instead of F-, but attack pilot isn’t as sexy as fighter pilot) and was quite aerodynamically efficient even when carrying a heavy load. Once tanks, pylons, and ordinance were dropped, however, the Thud could absolutely scream at low altitude. I just read in a Squadron/Signal book on the Thud a quote from a Thud pilot that said he exceeded 900 kts at under 1000 ft in full burner one time. That’s well over 1000 mph, I’m a bit dubious of that, but I do know the Thud could hit 800+ mph on the deck routinely. There haven’t been many birds before or since that could do that (speaking of birds, a birdstrike at that speed would be catastrophic, to say the least).

Of course, the Thud was made by Republic, not favored by McNamara, and he wanted all the services to use one aircraft, which wound up being the McDonnell Phantom II. A great a/c in many respects in its own right, but I wonder if some lives would not have been saved if USAF could have built the 2500 Thuds it originally planned. The Thud is generally recognized as being able to take significantly more damage than a Phantom and still RTB, or at least get the pilot somewhere over more friendly territory.

My hat’s off to Victor Vizcarra and John McKay for making this video. It’s a real achievement.

They say the wrong tactics are used. What should have been done differently? No low level sprint? I think using napalm on SAM sites is just about crazy. I’d say Snakeyes would be a lot better.

Boy that story of Pepper 1 and 2 stinks.

Ouch that summation hurts. The North Vietnamese loved doing stuff like that. In fact, they were brilliant at it. They knew exactly how to punch the US command echelon’s buttons and how to manipulate events to their favor. A for instance: Along the Northeast Railroad that ran from China down to Hanoi, there was an old abandoned and destroyed train engine. That engine had been bombed to smithereens 50 times. The North Vietnamese built an immense flak trap around it, and over the course of years managed to lure many green pilots to their doom with this ancient target. Of course, US tactics didn’t help, either, returning to the same spot over and over again, at the same time of day, from the same direction…….we often broadcast exactly what we were going to do before we did it. It was the worst-run war in American history, and the blame lies squarely on Johnson and McNamara and their ludicrously exaggerated fears of escalation. But the senior US military command did not exactly cover itself in glory, either. The soldiers, grunts, and airmen were the ones who paid the price for their folly.

@25:25 you might have heard the name Chuck Horner before. If there is a tale of sacrifice and redemption in this video, it might center on him. He commanded the awesomely successful coalition air campaign against Iraq in the First Gulf War. I did not know he flew Thuds. Another reason to like him.

Colonel Vizcarra if you ever read this you’d be doing this country and a whole world a service if you could make another video on the Thuds in Vietnam. I’m sure this was an enormous amount of effort but its value to history is inestimable. You have my utmost thanks and respect. I saw the bit about not copying or downloading without permission, that’s not the same as embedding with link back to your original, I hope that’s OK.

You can follow the Novena form here at A Catholic Life. The prayers of the Assumption Novena change from day to day.

A shorter Novena for the Assumption is below:

Mary, Queen Assumed into Heaven, I rejoice that after years of heroic martyrdom on earth, Thou hast at last been taken to the throneprepared for Thee in heaven by the Holy Trinity.

Lift my heart with Thee in the glory of Thy Assumption above the dreadful touch of sin and impurity. Teach me how small earth becomes when viewed from heaven. Make me realize that death is the triumphant gate
through which I shall pass to Thy Son, and that someday my body shall rejoin my soul in the unending bliss of heaven.

From this earth, over which I tread as a pilgrim, I look to Thee for help. I ask for this favor:

(State your intention here…)

When my hour of death has come, lead me safely to the presence of Jesus to enjoy the vision of my God for all eternity together with Thee.